My job is never dull

It’s basically surprise roulette, but with paperwork.

_{I am a 911 dispatcher, my fancy title is a Communications Officer.}

It’s my job to decide whether law, fire or EMS gets sent out. We don’t have fancy computers telling us what to do, nor do we have several different call takers. Usually there is one or two dispatchers on shift at a time. The judgement of what to do and who to send lives in my headset, my notes, and the split second between one breath and the next.

Sometimes I’m talking to all three (law, fire, ems) at once while still on the phone with a caller who’s house is on fire or her son is having a seizure. Of course those calls land on my shift, because night dispatchers don’t get quiet weird calls. They get capital W Weird. One minute it’s a lift assist, the next it’s a pharmacology bingo.

And when I hang up the phone or say, “Copy, I have you clear the scene” to my deputy, I quietly tell myself, it’s just another day. Which usually translates to: nothing exploded, nobody tried to steal the ambulance, and the paperwork only mildly fought back.

There’s a quiet, battle tested calm that comes with the job. The kind where chaos shows up loud and you answer it with a yawn and a pen click. Night shift does that. It sands the sharp edges off adrenaline.

And somehow, through all of it, I absolutely love my job. I work with family. The bond you build in law enforcement and dispatch is almost unbreakable. People tell me they’re jealous of the closeness we have, and I always tell them the same thing: they aren’t just coworkers. They’re my people.

And when the shift ends and the radios finally go quiet, I go home to a warm kitchen, a full house, and the comfort of knowing that feeding my family is the calm on the other side of the chaos.